homeschool-freedownloads

Drama

SKITS

Some of these skits are from “the days of yore” (late 1990s) back when I first started teaching. When I first put up my website I was in a hurry to get them posted so I just scanned the pages instead of retyping everything. I think everything is still legible. (And history hasn’t changed, so the content should be as fresh as it ever was. 😉

FULL-LENGTH PLAYS

I wrote this script back in 2011 for our homeschool Classical Theatre group. We had about 50 kids involved in the play so it was a BIG production. I spent endless hours reading huge volumes of tales from various sources and periods in history, and pulled out the best of the best for use with family-friendly theater. I did some tweaking but tried to stay as close to the original as I could. Reading this script is a legitimate literary activity, and is worth the time spent on it. (For more info on the sources, there is an info page at the beginning of the script.)

If you can’t perform a play but want the fun of doing so, try doing it as Reader’s Theater, where you just sit in a circle and read the script together, each person playing different parts. Add plenty of passion/humor where appropriate when you read your lines!

If you would like to use this script for a large-scale production (public performance), email me and let me know (not so much for the financial aspect, but mostly because I would love to see what you do with it!). If you are just going to use it in a very small setting, you aren’t under any obligation to contact me. Either way, please have a lot of fun with it!

This download is the actual script I used many years ago with our homeschool classical theater group. (Apologies for small typos if you find some!) To make staging easier (and slightly less violent), I have the story being told as a bedtime tale, with the mother and child at the side of the stag. I also added names for members of the group of pirates and gave each at least a line or two. This is wonderful if you are doing the play with a large group of little boys who all want to be pirates but who don’t want a lot of lines. Overall, though, I tried to really stay true to the actual novel as best I could. ( I do not like plays and movies that change too much from the original book, so I always try to be as faithful as possible to the original work.)

“Cyrano de Bergerac” and “The Canterbury Tales for Gentlefolke” used to be listed as free downloads. They have now been published and are available (for sale) through Jasper Publishing in the UK (jasperpublishing.com)

“Much Ado about Nothing in Queen Elizabeth’s Court” (running time- about 2 hrs.) This is a play within a play, with an historical frame tale around Shakespeare’s play. The frame tale introduces the Shakespeare authorship question and features Edward DeVere. The authorship question in this play is resolved by proposing a cooperative effort (with plenty of humor and a surprise ending!). If you are interested in this script, just email me and let me know. ejm.basementworkshop@gmail.com